Whole body healing touch Your skin is the largest organ of your body. We all know that a loving touch feels good, but did you know it can also affect your health and even your survival? Ancient medical records describe touch as one of the healer's most valuable tools. Touch was used to promote healing long before the invention of modern drugs. Whatever our cultural background, we all have a natural desire to touch and to be touched. Touching is intimate. Intimacy is healing. Lack of human contact can lead to profound isolation, illness, and even death. The relationship of touching to health was noted as far back as the 13th century. The German emperor Frederick II conducted a horrible experiment to find out what language children would speak if they were raised without hearing anyone talking. He took several newborns away from their parents and gave them to nurses who were forbidden to touch or talk with them. These babies never learned a language because they all died before they could talk. In the year 1248 the historian Salimbene wrote of these babies, "They could not live without petting. More recently, a study of babies in ten institutions in 1915 found that every baby who was less than two years old had died, even though nutrition and sanitation were adequate. Why? Concern about spreading infectious diseases had led to a policy of minimal human contact with the babies, who were touched only infrequently. A number of more recent studies are clearly showing the benefits of touch in newborns and adults. At the Touch Research Institute in Miami, premature babies given three loving massages a day for ten days gained weight 47 percent faster and left the hospital six days sooner than those not massaged, saving $10,000 each. Nurturing touch has also been found to be useful in treating depression, developmental delays, dermatitis, diabetes, eating disorders, heart disease, irregular heartbeat, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, posttraumatic stress disorder, psoriasis, and a variety of other conditions. As a society we need to have a greater understanding of the healing power of touching. We should look for ways to increase our contact with other people while respecting their boundaries. We need to elevate our concept of love to transcend the institutionalized restrictions that have been erected by a society that encourages control of nature rather than communion with it. Whole Body Healing Touch/Divine Body Reality is a combination of loving nurturing touch with intention focusing on extending your physical, emotional, and intellectual awareness. The positive expansive feelings of love, appreciation, acceptance, and compassion promote deep relaxation and cultivate clearer thinking, calmer emotions, improved physical health, and more frequent spiritual experiences. The most fundamental longing of the human heart is for union with the divine. This union of love delights the senses and revives the spirit. This higher state of consciousness is a dynamic expression of your psyche. This deep level of intimacy opens the heart so that you can feel the love within you pouring out, engulfing you in a deep sense of connection between yourself and the world. To be enlightened is to be intimately connected with all things. This realization, this awareness, creates tremendous freedom in making choices. We can choose to live with an open heart, a love that can include everyone and everything, becoming intimate with ourselves and all things, expanding from our separate self to the universal self... stepping into a profound state of love and timelessness.